A Framework for the Study of Pricing In Integrated Networks

Integrated networks of the near future are expected to provide a wide variety of services, which could consume widely differing amounts of resources. We present a framework for pricing services in integrated networks, and study the effect of pricing on user behavior and network performance. We first describe a network model that is simple, yet models details such as the wealth distribution in society, different classes of services, peak and off-peak traffic, elasticity of user's demand, and call blocking due to budgetary constraints.